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Many Universities Spending $100K/Year Enforcing P2P Rules
Scott Jaschik writes "A new study documents just how much money colleges are spending on enforcing P2P rules through software license fees, hardware, and other costs. Many private universities are spending more than $100,000 a year — a major allocation of funds. An article in Inside Higher Ed explains the study and its findings."
They could use the money and get more bandwidth.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
My university both supports and is against bittorrent. There are posters that say we shouldn't use it, while at the same time there are instructions on how to securely use bittorrent on a university website. Guess it's because we have one of the co-creators of bittorrent on campus.
It's a bit misleading in my experience.
I would say that the services and equipment which are used to fight or support or enforce P2P issues are easily at the $100k level in larger universities.
However, the equipment and services are also used for other purposes such as regulating bandwidth usage, fighting viruses and worms, and limiting network access to only members of the University community.
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On that basis it's hard to see how they could do a proper job for less.
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In a way, $100,000 isn't much for a university...any university really. Salary costs alone would eat up this amount quickly.
No, this $100,000 is likely coming out of small campus programs who are lucky to have a budget. If it's being routed out of the overall tech budget, chances are that's the computer lab upgrade budget or other small, but needed programs that could really use that money. Seems a shame that money isn't being used better.
the average slashdot reader continues to buy new DVD's and pay absurd monthly video content fees that directly support the RIAA
Those purchases directly support the MPAA. Just as evil, but a different group.
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My wife has worked for more than one University and let me tell you that the waste across the board is horrendous. This is just a drop in the bucket but yet another example of short sighted wasteful spending. Meanwhile, tuition continues to go up at a rate that greatly outpaces core inflation.
Colleges are put in the very uncomfortable position of ISP for their residential students.
and they should behave like an ISP and stop filtering crap for unrelated corporate interests.
Just follow the law and provide information if served with proper papers, and let the students *gasp*, make their own choices and take responsibility for them.
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I know that a lot of people aren't taking this issue to heart, and a lot of people agree that relative to the university budget, this isn't a lot of money to be spent. However, people need to stop seeing this as a fraction of a large budget, and start seeing it for what it truly is. It isn't until the economy start to depreciate that people see the value of small numbers, and if they would have seen it earlier, it would be helping them out more in desperate times. Just last year, my university paid for Carlos Mencia to do some stand up. Apart from the fact that he's a terrible comedian that did the exact act that anyone can see on comedy central, I'm sure they spent somewhere in the area of the amount that it would cost to keep our multimillion dollar gymnasium a bit cooler for the rest of the year. When you waste that kind of money on something useless, you're not doing your job of keeping university priorities strait. What my university essentially said, is that it's important for some hack to tell everyone that Mexicans eat burritos, so we have to sacrifice comfort when working out. Hell, the robotics club could have used a fraction of that for a better processor on our land vehicle.
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Good post.
Another example on a more-personal level: I have a credit card that gives me 5% off gasoline and food. It's only ~50 cents per fillup or 5 cents per hamburger, which is no big deal, but those pennies quickly accumulate. In just this year alone, I've received $300 in rebates. That's enough money to pay three months worth of electricity bills.
Small amounts add-up to big amounts. Small wastes add-up to huge wastes & internal corruption.
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I recently graduated from Penn State and the real problem lies with the fact that the people in charge of discipline action have no idea what they are doing. They are not special tech administrators but instead send you to the Judicial affairs office for violations. I had my internet turned off for 2 weeks and could have gotten a disciplinary action from the school (such as suspension, expulsion, etc) because someone had apparently downloaded the shareware version of Dreamweaver from me. Yes I am talking about the 30 day trial. Until you get administrators that understand technology, you cannot be effective in this fight against student rights.
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